


Hasty Decisions

by darkling59



Series: Annals of the Incomplete [37]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkling59/pseuds/darkling59
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaving the metacrisis doctor behind in Pete's World was a mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hasty Decisions

The Doctor is kneeling on the floor of his TARDIS with bitter, resigned tears dripping down his face. His metacrisis clone is lying across his lap, horribly still and barely breathing.

It’s a mocking parody of his last moments with the Master but, rather than a single red blossom on his chest, the double is dripping with blood and coated in dirt. His body seems to…bend wrong, as if it is so crushed and injured that nature itself has given up on him.

“No…please…I’m sorry, so sorry.”

The Doctor can’t help his desperate whimpers. This…all of this…is his fault. And not in the indirect way that the Master’s death was. He is directly responsible for this man’s plight. Intentions aside (and they weren’t exactly pure, either), he was the one who left the clone on the beach only an hour after his creation, isolated from anything he could possibly understand. Oh, he’d made excuses at the time: Rose would take care of him, he only had one life, he wasn’t the Doctor (as if being someone else would make him something less), he needed to learn compassion…

The poor creature had saved the universe and been punished for it.

He feels the spark of the metacrisis’ mind flicker and dim. The Other’s chest moves in what might have been a cough, if he had enough energy to finish the movement. Tired green eyes-not his, not Donna’s, something entirely new – slit open and try valiantly to focus on him one last time before sliding away. There isn’t enough energy left to close them so he just stares vacantly at nothing.

The Doctor hugs him closer, trying to muffle his sobs.

When he’d felt the barrier between the universes degrading, he’d investigated to find the entire sector riddled with rifts. In some places it was so bad that space itself looked like swiss cheese; in others, multiple versions of planets and stars were trying to occupy the same space.

It was a disaster.

He’d realized quickly that the only reason the whole prime universe hadn’t been shredded was because a familiar consciousness was keeping the rifts steady. On contact, he’d gone into full ‘Oncoming Storm’ mode and demanded to know what his double thought he was doing. He’d said some things that, in retrospect, were highly inappropriate.

It was while he was telepathically trying to contact his double that he got his first sign that something was wrong. There was no response. No greeting, spiteful or friendly (although friendly would have been a surprise in such a situation), attack, retreat…

Confused but certain his opponent was forcing the pathways open, he tried to telepathically pin the other man down, to try to detach him through their minds. It was a risky gesture but, since he was a full time lord while the other was merely half, one he was willing to take.

What he found was ‘wisps’ of consciousness barely holding the rift edges together, not apart. There was no directing mentality; it was as if the metacrisis had tied the edges to his wrists before falling unconscious so that, no matter how hard the anomaly pulled, it wouldn’t be able to spread without literally (or in this case telepathically) ripping him apart. The Doctor couldn’t reach him; he couldn’t even feel his lifeforce.

That was when he realized there was something very, very wrong.

_“Doctor!”_

He’d shouted the word, telepathically, across the system, projecting it through the vortex.

Sluggish acknowledgement was his only response but he was ridiculously happy to see any sign of life. He bombarded the other with questions but they went unanswered. The metacrisis acknowledged him then set about detaching himself from the rifts, doggedly trying to lead the Time lord into sealing the gaps.

The Doctor caught on quickly and played his part, growing more concerned by the second as he wondered what could possibly have caused the problem, if his double was actually the one fixing it. Even then, he hadn’t held much concern for the man himself, he was now ashamed to admit.

That thought projected across through telepathy and he caught the barest glimpse of an alien device in the other’s mind. He tried to pin down the specifics but the Other was too far gone. When the Doctor tried to confront him and realized the other man honestly couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, a hard, sick feeling began to build in the pit of his stomach. He started to pay more attention to the other man rather than the situation and saw that the ‘wisps’ holding the fabric of space together were dissipating rather than returning to their source and the mind was growing weaker over time.

When they were on the final hole, he detached the other man as gently as he could and passed through the barrier rather than closing it right away. He instructed the TARDIS to materialize as close to the other man as possible.

What he found was chaos.

The metacrisis was half buried in rubble, within a demolished Torchwood cell, in much the same condition he was in now except more lucid. And in more pain. All around, pieces of the building were collapsing and the smell of smoke was thick in the air. There were guttural cries in the distance but none of them were human.

The Doctor had been gentle in his request for contact and had been allowed in. The Other didn’t bother to put any doors up (not that he would have had the energy) and allowed the facts and events to appear unchanged in his mind’s eye.

Rose’s decision. His classification as a dangerous alien (on the Doctor’s words). The dimension cannon. The experiments. Warnings.

Destruction.

Death.

He didn’t even have a name.

The Doctor understood then, and brought the dying meta-no, timelord-into the TARDIS. Any energy the Other might have used to fuel a regeneration had been expended holding together the walls of the universe. He’d given up everything to save everyone, again. And he’d done it with full knowledge of what would happen, that he would die in pain and alone in a specimen cell. After what everyone else, including the Doctor, had done to him.

He was a hero. And barely four months old.

“I’m sorry, so sorry.” The Doctor sobbed, already mourning the passing of another timelord.

The Other’s hand twitched and the Doctor brought it up to his face, uncaring if the contact would be hostile.

At first nothing happened.

Then, as his soul dimmed to nearly nothing, a barely there mental whisper: _Doctor?_

‘I’m sorry. So sorry.”

_…I forgive you._

The hand slid away.

And the Doctor was alone.


End file.
